Verdant Works Jute Museum & Broughty Ferry (Dundee)

This afternoon in Dundee took me to the Verdant Works Jute Museum and Broughty Ferry, a suburb of Dundee. The Verdant Works Jute Museum is the sight I alluded to in this morning’s post that’s near a stop on the seasonally non-running Dundee hop-on, hop-off bus tour. It’s only a little more than a 15-minute walk from my last-visited sight this morning, the V&A Dundee museum, so, without the bus available, I hoofed it, with a stop at a small café along the way for a sandwich along the way.

Verdant Works Jute Museum

At one time, the processing of jute and the fashioning of it into end products was a major industry in Dundee, with multiple factories functioning here. The Vedant Works was one of them. The last of the jute mills in Dundee closed in the late 1990s. Today, the building of the Verdant Works is a jute museum. The museum is run by the same trust that runs the Discovery Point Museum that I visited this morning.

They sold a joint ticket to both museums, which I bought. So, having already bought a ticket, how could I possibly not go to the Verdant Works? People are starving for museums in oh, so many places. I couldn’t let the ticket go to waste.

To be honest, I had heard of jute, but I had no clear idea of what it was, or, rather, I couldn’t remember what it was before I visited the museum. That’s more an indication of my ignorance than anything else.

Jute is made from a plant that’s grown primarily along the banks of the Ganges River in India. At one time, most jute was processed in India, but with the coming of the industrial age, processing jute with machines elsewhere became cheaper than manual processing in the then-little-industrialized India. Dundee, which was a major port in those days (although not so today) had a major jute trade, with large quantities of raw jute imported in 400-lb bales. Factories opened up to process it, spin it into yarn, and loom it into cloth.

The Verdant Works Jute Museum shows the original offices, with mannequins filling in for the administrative staff in the office. On the old factory floor, there are pieces of original machines used to process the jute and turn it into cloth. The machines are operational but they weren’t in operation when I was there. A sign on one apologized for it not working because a part broke and they were waiting for a replacement to be fashioned.

If they apologized for that machine, why didn’t they apologize for the operational, but non-operating machines? To be fair, I think they do occasionally start them up to show them working to paying customers. But I think the operators were on their lunch break and I didn’t want to wait to see if they came back.

Seeing jute cloth, it was immediately recognizable and I was able to locate the little-used word (little-used by me) in my existing mindmap. Jute cloth served several purposes. It was once considered the best base for carpets because of its strength and because it didn’t stretch.

It was also used extensively for shipping sacks and sandbags. It was even used in some clothing. And, what surprised me, it formed the foundation for linoleum.

Towards the end of the jute industry’s reign in Dundee, the mills (or maybe the one remaining mill by that point, I’m not sure) started making their cloth out of a combination of jute and polypropylene to better compete with factories elsewhere. But, eventually, this was not enough to compete with producers in low-wage countries that had by then also mechanized. The last of the Dundee works then closed down.

I don’t have any idea if anyone still makes true jute cloth today or if it’s all made entirely from polypropylene.

In addition to the operational machines on display, the Verdant Works Jute Museum provides its information through text panels and a couple of videos.

I also got a brief live introduction to the plant. However, I don’t know if everyone who visits gets that or if you have to serendipitously get there at the right time.

When I arrived and presented my joint ticket at the desk, the person there pointed to one of the staff who had only just started to talk to a small group of people in the courtyard. But the ticket person said that if I missed that introduction I could just read the information on the wall-mounted panels.

Jute doesn’t sound exciting. And it likely isn’t for most people, including me. Nevertheless, the Verdant Works is an interesting little specialty museum. I enjoyed it.

Broughty Ferry

One of my guidebooks briefly, but positively mentioned Broughty Ferry as something to see if you’re in Dundee. Because my guidebooks don’t mention much else to do in Dundee that I hadn’t already done, I decided to check it out.

Broughty Ferry is a suburb of Dundee, about a thirty-minute bus ride away from central Dundee. The bus line that I had a 24-hour pass on runs a route out there. I took it.

Broughty Ferry is a somewhat quaint town beside the Firth of Tay closer to the open sea than Dundee. It has a fair amount of low-rise housing, some shops, a long sand beach, and a small, old castle.

One thing I don’t think Broughty Ferry is a ferry. Don’t ask me how it got its name. I imagine there was once a ferry, probably before the road and rail bridges upstream at Dundee came into existence, but I didn’t see a ferry dock there today, nor did I see a ferry route marked on either Apple Maps or Google Maps.

Broughty Castle’s building has a relatively small footprint. Today, it contains a museum with a small gallery on each floor. One provides a very brief history of Broughty Ferry, not specifically the castle. If that gallery provided the derivation of the town’s name I missed it.

Another floor contains a small, one-room art gallery. Another talks about fauna, mostly aquatic birds, of Broughty Ferry. Yet another floor contains a small armoury gallery displaying a few weapons. There is also an area up top that provides a view of Broughty Ferry’s beach and, in another direction, across the firth to the other side. (The castle is at a bend in the fifth.)

After visiting Broughty Castle, walking along a portion of Broughty Ferry’s beach, and taking a short stroll through town, I caught the bus back to central Dundee and ended my afternoon.

With seemingly so little for tourists to do in Dundee, and the town not being particularly spectacular, you might wonder why I booked three nights here (one more full day to come), rather than two or none*. I might be wondering that myself. But I did have a reason. I’ll probably explain it tomorrow. Stay tuned for that.

(* Why did I say “two or none, rather than “two, one, or none?” I generally book only one night in a town solely if I have to make a train connection in that city or town and it’s impossible to complete the full journey in one day because of poor connections and/or the distance between the stops, or if the journey would be unbearably long if done in one day. Booking just one night at a place you want to visit rather than just connecting through means that you get, at most, two half days and maybe not even that depending on train times. Hence, I typically book at least two nights in places I want to visit.)